


Name Your Demons

by Brachylagus_fandom



Series: Victorious [3]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: But not sad either, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Child Death, Dead People, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, No Dialogue, Not Happy, Past Character Death, Past Violence, Spoilers, This is what haymitch does when he isn't drunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 14:49:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5421113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brachylagus_fandom/pseuds/Brachylagus_fandom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haymitch has one way to tame his demons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Name Your Demons

Haymitch has a small black notebook in his pocket every day. The only thing in it is names, starting in his clean, sixteen-year-old print and slowly degrading into its current illegible scrawl. First, penned in blue ink, is a list of forty-seven.

_Velvetine, 17, who almost won, hit by her own axe_   
_Emerald, 12, who will never have her heart broken, stung by butterflies_   
_Diamond, 18, who should have looked behind him, shot with a dart_   
_Sheen, 17, who thought the water was safe, poisoned_   
_Felicia, 13, who was too young to fight, suffocated_   
_Laura, 14, who was never crowned, stabbed_   
_Honorius, 17, who lived and died in rock, drowned in lava_   
_Caesar, 18, who was the strongest, eaten by squirrels_   
_Copper, 12, who limped, strangled_   
_Wiress, 15, who was the smartest of us all, stabbed in the back_   
_Voltaire, 16, who never made it to the woods, stabbed in the eye_   
_Amper, 17, who had never seen fresh food, poisoned_   
_Mary, 13, who looked so beautiful in that blue dress, snapped neck_   
_Annabeth, 17, who had been bitten by a shark, fell off the mountain_   
_Caspian, 18, who had a cruel mind, burned in lava_   
_Finn, 15, who could swim for hours, burned in lava_   
_Electra, 13, who had bright eyes and a frail body, fell and didn’t rise_   
_Hydra, 14, who sang beautifully, beaten with a mace_   
_Sol, 12, who never heard a cannon, choked_   
_Watt, 15, who lost his sister and girlfriend, suicide_   
_Titania, 16, who blew kisses in the chariot parade, sleeping bag flooded in lava_   
_Aurelia, 14, who tried to protect Balbus, stabbed_   
_Balbus, 16, who couldn’t protect himself, stabbed_   
_Cassian, 18, who laughed at my outfit, stabbed_   
_Maple, 15, who slept in trees, burned to death in a tree_   
_Willow, 17, who was amazingly flexible, beaten_   
_Blight, 12, who could barely pick up a sword, caved in skull_   
_John, 14, who could climb to heaven, bled to death_   
_Satin, 14, who had red hair, slashed throat_   
_Coco, 15, who had lost her sister in last year’s games, burned alive_   
_Lowell, 13, who never really lived, died quick_   
_Lawrence, 16, who was Lowell’s brother, stabbed_   
_Jane, 13, who loved flowers, poisoned_   
_Plenti, 14, who could hold her breath the longest, smothered in eruption_   
_Chaff, 16, who never kissed a girl, died in lava_   
_Cornie, 15, who was a fighter, killed by Careers_   
_Joann, 15, who ran fast, burned to death in lava_   
_Bovi, 13, who loved nothing more than cattle, shot through the heart_   
_Dalton, 17, who knew every cut of beef known to man, pushed into volcano_   
_Burke, 18, who could remember anything he heard, strangled_   
_Prim, 13, who was a delicate flower, crushed ribcage_   
_Apple, 12, who was barely old enough to be reaped, drowned in poison_   
_Thresh, 16, who had nothing to live for, an arrow to the heart_   
_Harvest, 17, who knew what berries were safe, starvation_   
_Aster, 13, who was my sister in all but blood, snapped neck_   
_Maysilee, 15, who saved me, speared by a pink bird_   
_Ash, 18, who almost made it, infected burns_

_All killed by the Capitol as punishment for people who are long dead._

He can add so much more; even now, he can remember the tiniest of details about some of them. He can remember that the Careers had tortured most of their kills, Caspian in particular. He can remember the uneasy whispers about what had happened to Cornie, the one death that he had not seen. He can remember Velvetine in her death throes and in the purple dress at the interviews. He can clearly see Lawrence sobbing over Lowell. He can see Capsian holding tiny Apple in the pond, laughing as she struggled and Thresh tried to save her; he can see Apple’s brilliant smile covering panic interview night.

That’s why he starts drinking, to take the edge off of the arena. The habit worsens with the next set of four.

 _Daisy Abernathy, my mother_   
_Marcus Abernathy, my father_   
_Jonathan Abernathy, my baby brother_   
_Margaret Pinewood, my girlfriend_

_All killed by the Capitol to punish me._

The drinking gets worse with every pair of names he has to add. In the end, he adds forty-six more. Forty-six more children he can’t save.

Before the Seventy-Fourth Reaping, he was expecting to add two more.

After the reaping, he expected _Katniss Everdeen_ and _Peeta Mellark_ to be written in his notebook as he rode the train back home alone.

Neither dies, but Haymitch realized that those names were going to end up on another list, the _Killed by the Capitol because they were too smart for their own good_ list.

After writing the list down for twenty-three years, Haymitch knows full well who the enemy is.

More names go down in the next two years than in all the years since he wrote down the first set, e _nding finally with Alma Coin_ and _Coriolanus Snow, killed by the pawn they once controlled_.

Directly before that comes _Primrose Everdeen, who was a mockingbird in a word needing an angry Mockingjay, killed by double-exploding bombs._

Haymitch keeps record for a reason; the names were once people. Good people, bad people, smart people, strong people, dead people. Lots of dead people. Lots of dead children.

He censors his demons by knowing their names. When you name your demons, they lose power. Haymitch knows about power.


End file.
